In response to the release early this month of the
Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which opens with the
phrase “The global war on drugs has failed,” the White House’s Office of
National Drug Control Policy quickly sent out
a press release saying, in essence, “Nuh-uh!” The press release,
however, was far too timid in its defence of the drug war, citing
dubious claims of reductions in the demand for and supply of illegal
narcotics. A more robust defence, which I have gone to the trouble of
compiling below, shows beyond the shadow of a flashback that the war on
drugs has been a smashing success.

Asset Forfeiture

Most measures of the success of the war on drugs mistakenly focus on its
questionable benefits in reducing the harm caused by the consumption of
illegal narcotics. Refocusing our lens a little, it is clear that the
drug war is a huge boon to police forces, thanks to asset forfeiture
laws.

In late 2009, Shukree Simmons
was pulled over on a Georgia highway for a DWB (driving while black)
after having just sold his old Chevy pickup truck for $3,700, which he
received in cash. Although the police officers found no evidence of
illegal activity, they nonetheless confiscated the money “on the
suspicion that the funds were derived from illegal activity, pursuant to
their authority under Georgia’s civil asset forfeiture law.” The illegal
activity most commonly “suspected” by police is, of course, drug crime.

Unfortunately in this case, those meddling kids at the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) interfered, and Simmons got his money back, and
without having to shell out thousands of dollars in legal fees to prove
that the money was not obtained illegally, either. But many other cases
are more profitable. According to the ACLU, the state of Georgia seized
over $38 million in 2003 alone thanks to asset forfeitures. That’s quite
the haul! And although Georgia law only allows police to keep 1/3 of the
proceeds from such seizures—which would be incentive enough—if they hand
over the proceeds from “drug-related seizures” to the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA), they get fully 4/5 of it back in a process known
as “equitable sharing.” Everybody wins!

Militarization of the Police

Another benefit of the drug war for local law enforcement is that it
provides the perfect excuse for coppers to play soldier. If a
potentially violent drug dealer is holed up in a house somewhere, police
get to dress up in full SWAT gear, complete with Kevlar helmets and
vests, and use awesome equipment ranging from sniper rifles to
submachine guns, from night vision goggles to flash-bang grenades. They
also get to break down the door and charge in unannounced in order to
catch the possibly violent drug dealers by surprise. It’s not my kind of
thrill, but you’ve got to imagine that for people who like that sort of
thing, it’s quite a rush.

Of course, sometimes the occupant is just
a small-time perp, and sometimes police
get the wrong guy, but these mistakes should not be blown out of
proportion. With 100 to 150 such raids each and every day in America,
mistakes are gonna happen, and just like in any war, there’s bound to be
some collateral damage. The real crime is that these videos get released
to the public, tarnishing the images of our brave drug warriors.

Prison Planet

State prisons in the United States house over 250,000 inmates for drug
offenses, with another 100,000 or so
held in federal prisons. These prisoners represent a huge boon to
the economy in the form of job creation. It’s not just the hours clocked
by police officers to arrest these drug fiends and by lawyers and judges
to try them and convict them. It’s also all of those extra prisons that
have to be built, and then have to be manned with guards, cooks,
cleaning staff, and so on. What would all of those people do for work if
we ended the drug war, as the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s Report
suggests? The war on drugs is the mother of all stimulus programs, baby.

As an added bonus for white racists, people arrested and thrown in jail
for drug crimes in the United States are overwhelmingly members of
visible minorities. To take just one metric, black children are over
seven times more likely than white children to have a parent in prison,
in large part due to the uneven prosecution of the
war on
drugs. The country’s first black president has done little to change
the status quo in this regard.

Perpetual War

Finally, the drug war has been great for organized criminal gangs and
terrorists, whose inflated profits from dealing in banned substances
would evaporate if not for prohibition. It takes someone with a strong
stomach to assume the risks associated with producing or selling illegal
drugs. Enter the criminal or terrorist, willing to use violence to
achieve his ends and seduced by the lure of strong demand and government-restricted
supply. Simply put, outlaws have cashed in since drugs were outlawed.

If you think this is a bad thing, you're probably still focused on the
whole harm-reduction angle. But by helping outlaws, the drug war
indirectly helps society as a whole by ensuring that the paramilitary police fighting on
America’s city streets, and the military soldiers fighting in the hills
of Afghanistan, will never lack for work. The never-ending quest to stop
people from seeking out altered states of consciousness—beyond what they
can achieve with alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, and the like—guarantees
that the war will never be won. But that in itself is the ultimate
victory for police, prison guards, soldiers, defence contractors, and
military commanders, who fear nothing more than a world that realizes it
doesn’t need them as much as they think it does.

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Bradley
Doucet is a writer living in Montreal. He has studied
philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on
the pursuit of happiness. He also is QL's English Editor.